Esther’s eyes shot away from the picture. ‘I don’t recognize him.’
‘You never saw him hanging around your house or neighborhood, or anything like that?’
‘No,’ Esther said crisply.
‘He was real big,’ Ben went on. ‘Did Doreen ever indicate that she knew or had seen a big man?’
‘No.’
Ben returned the photograph to his pocket. ‘You know the rubber plant not far from Bearmatch?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did Doreen ever mention going over there?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think she might have hung around that place?’ Ben asked. ‘Maybe with other kids?’
Esther looked at Ben, puzzled. ‘No. Why would she?’
‘That’s where the guy lived.’
‘Around the rubber plant?’
‘Inside the fence,’ Ben said. ‘In a storm drain.’
Esther’s eyes glistened. ‘Is that where …?’
‘It looks that way,’ Ben told her. ‘But I still can’t figure out how she got over there.’
‘Maybe he took her there,’ Esther said.
‘I thought about that,’ Ben said, ‘But Mr Davenport says that he let her out at around five in the afternoon. He says that she wanted to play with another little girl she saw in the ballfield. You got any idea who that little girl might have been?’
Esther thought for a moment. She seemed to move back toward him from some distant place she’d occupied during the few preceding minutes. ‘There’s a little girl named Ramona. She lives over near the ballfield. I’ve seen Doreen play with her.’
‘You know the address?’ Ben asked immediately.
‘It’s that light-blue house at the far end, the downtown corner.’
‘Twenty-second and First,’ Ben said.
‘That’s right,’ Esther told him. ‘hat corner.’
Ben threw the last box into the bin. From the corner of his eye he could see several dark faces staring at him from behind the dusty window at the back of the cafe.
‘They’re all watching us,’ he said to Esther.
‘Course they are,’ Esther said edgily. ‘What do you expect?’
‘Do they know about your niece?’
‘Just that she’s dead,’ Esther told him. ‘The rest of it, that’s nobody’s business.’
‘I’m going to find out who did it, Miss Ballinger,’ Ben said.
‘I thought you already had.’
It was only then that it struck Ben how little he thought he knew, how much more there was to know. He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said quietly, in a voice that seemed aimed at no one but himself.
It was almost evening before he glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a few weary stragglers as they trudged across the bare, unseeded ground toward the downtown corner of the old ballfield. All through the late afternoon hours, Ben had remained in his car, carefully eyeing each passerby who approached the small light-blue house. With each passing second, the air had seemed to grow heavier, and as he sat in his car and listened to the steady blare of sirens, he could sense that something had surely gone wrong on Fourth Avenue or beneath the swaying elms of Kelly Ingram Park. He could see it in the drawn angry faces of the people who glared at him as they slogged up the street in their sopping wet clothes and tangled hair. Their pants and skirts were ripped and caked with dirt, as if they’d been rolled in a muddy field, but Ben did not get out of his car to find out what had happened to them until, toward evening, he saw a tall, slender woman pass through the rusty gate of the light-blue house. A young girl clung to her hand, and she only appeared to grip it more tightly as Ben stepped out of his car and moved toward them.
‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ he said as he took off his hat.
The woman’s eyes stared at him fearfully. She did not speak.
‘I’m looking into something that happened to one of your neighbors,’ Ben added softly, ‘Doreen Ballinger’
The woman continued to watch him suspiciously. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Well, I’m told that Doreen sometimes played in this old ballfield with a little girl named Ramona Davies,’ Ben said. He glanced down at the little girl, then back up at the woman. ‘Is this Ramona?’
The mother instinctively drew the little girl up against her waist. ‘What you want with her?’
‘Just to talk to her,’ Ben said. ‘About Doreen. It’s possible that your little girl was the last person to see her alive.’
‘You with the po-lice?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Ben said.
‘They sprayed us today,’ the woman snapped bitterly. ‘And sicked them dogs on us.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Ben said.
‘They wasn’t no call fer ’em to do it,’ the woman said fiercely. ‘We was peaceful, all of us.’
Ben nodded gently. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And they just done it out of meanness,’ the woman added sharply. ‘Just pure ole meanness.’
Ben’s eyes fell toward the girl. He smiled quietly, but she only stared at him expressionlessly, her small fingers tightening around her mother’s hand.
‘You wasn’t there, was you?’ the woman asked.
Ben looked at her. ‘No, ma’am.’
‘How come?’
‘I guess you might say I’m trying to stay out of it,’ Ben told her. ‘I just want to figure out who killed Doreen Ballinger.’
The woman’s eyes seemed to search his face. ‘Well,’ she said after a moment, ‘I guess I could let you talk to Ramona.’
‘I’d appreciate it,’ Ben said.
The woman looked at her daughter. ‘You stay in the front yard with the man, here,’ she said. ‘I’ll go fix supper.’
The girl did not let go of her mother’s fingers.
‘It’s all right, Ramona,’ the woman assured her. ‘I’ll be right inside here.’ She tugged her fingers free of the little girl’s grasp. ‘You holler if you need anything,’ she added as she headed up the walkway toward the house.
The little girl’s eyes shifted over to Ben.
‘Hi,’ Ben said softly.
‘Hey.’
Ben sat down on the grass just inside the fence. ‘I know you probably want to go play,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you too long.’
The girl shifted nervously on her feet.
‘I hear you played with Doreen from time to time,’ Ben said.
Ramona nodded.
‘Did you play with her last Sunday afternoon?’
The little girl stared at him blankly.
‘I’ll bet you go to church on Sunday night, don’t you?’ Ben asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Just before you went last time, did you see Doreen?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where’d you see her?’
Ramona pointed to the field. ‘Over there, behind them trees.’
Ben looked in the direction she indicated. There were three large trees in the far corner of the field, a rope swing had been hung from one of them, and it swayed very slowly in the early evening breeze.
